In response to critique of Amy Coney Barrett's record, her supporters have often cried out that religious freedom Is under attack. However, often the right uses biblical language to cloud views that are ultimately rooted in white supremacy, which can be confusing to navigate politically. Our guests today are well versed in this topic through scholastic and life experience. We will be speaking with three Reverends today who all serve in Washington, DC with social justice and activism as a central part of their ministries.
Rev. Sally Sarratt and Rev. Maria Swearingen share life, love, and ministry together at Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. Together, they serve a community of progressive Christian resisters, contemplatives, and dreamers who keep responding to national and global diseases like white supremacy, war, racism, religious bigotry, and homophobia with the good news of a liberating God who dares to call each of us “Beloved.”
When Reverend Alyssa Aldape was fourteen, her family moved from San Antonio to India to do missionary work with the Banjara people. That was when Alyssa saw discrimination in a new light. The Banjara are a nomadic tribe in India and there is a social stigma against them in modern Indian society. Alyssa recalls seeing her parents—practicing Baptists from the other side of the world—motivated to work with this marginalized group. When she turned 18, Alyssa moved back to the United States to attend college in Birmingham, Alabama, where she lived for six years. Now, as an associate pastor at First Baptist Church DC, Rev. Aldape considers advocacy an integral part of her ministry.